I think you would find her most sympathetic. She is forced to be in attendance on her mother just now. But what a temperament! I have once described her in her autograph album as tigress with a flower in the hair. Will you excuse me? Perhaps I can persuade them to be introduced to you.«

I said, »I am going up to my room.« But the Professor rose and shook a playful finger at me. »Na,« he said, »we are friends, and, therefore, I shall speak quite frankly to you. I think they would consider it a little ›marked‹ if you immediately retired to the house at their approach, after sitting here alone with me in the twilight. You know this world. Yes, you know it as I do.«

I shrugged my shoulders, remarking with one eye that while the Professor had been talking the Godowskas had trailed across the lawn towards us. They confronted the Herr Professor as he stood up.

»Good evening,« quavered Frau Godowska. »Wonderful weather! It has given me quite a touch of hay fever!« Fräulein Godowska said nothing. She swooped over a rose growing in the embryo orchard, then stretched out her hand with a magnificent gesture to the Herr Professor. He presented me.

»This is my little English friend of whom I have spoken. She is the stranger in our midst. We have been eating cherries together.«

»How delightful,« sighed Frau Godowska. »My daughter and I have often observed you through the bedroom window. Haven't we, Sonia?«

Sonia absorbed my outward and visible form with an inward and spiritual glance, then repeated the magnificent gesture for my benefit. The four of us sat on the bench, with that faint air of excitement of passengers established in a railway carriage on the qui vive for the train whistle. Frau Godowska sneezed. »I wonder if it is hay fever,« she remarked, worrying the satin reticule for her handkerchief, »or would it be the dew. Sonia, dear, is the dew falling?«

Fräulein Sonia raised her face to the sky and half closed her eyes. »No, mamma, my face is quite warm. Oh, look, Herr Professor, there are swallows in flight; they are like a little flock of Japanese thoughts – nicht wahr?«

»Where?« cried the Herr Professor. »Oh yes, I see, by the kitchen chimney. But why do you say ›Japanese‹? Could you not compare them with equal veracity to a little flock of German thoughts in flight?« He rounded on me. »Have you swallows in England?«

»I believe there are some at certain seasons. But doubtless they have not the same symbolical value for the English. In Germany –«

»I have never been to England,« interrupted Fräulein Sonia, »but I have many English acquaintances. They are so cold!« She shivered.

»Fish-blooded,« snapped Frau Godowska. »Without soul, without heart, without grace. But you cannot equal their dress materials.